Puerto Lopez

Unfortunately, that is not our picture. We were not fortunate enough, nor nearly fast enough with our camera to get a shot like that. We did, however, see some pretty similar things today during our day tour from Puerto Lopez to Isla de la Plata, otherwise known as "the Poor Man's Galapagos." You don't even have to be poor for the Galapagos to be out of your price range. Flights and a few nights on a dinky boat would have easily set us back over 2 grand. Isla de la Plata, on the other hand, only cost us $55 bucks for an 8 hour tour including whale watching, guided tour of the island, snorkeling, and lunch, and that's including the $20 park fee. Not a bad deal at all.

I've been trying to think of something funny to say about these guys, but just can't...

Above is the famous Blue-Footed Booby. What a great name, and a cool bird to boot. It's probably the animal I have always most wanted to see from the Galapagos, and since Isla de la Plata doesn't have the Galapagos' most famous animal - that being the giant tortoise - I was happy that it does have the blue footed booby in abundance. They nest all over the island, sometimes right in the middle of the trail, and aren't really scared of you. They wouldn't let you walk up and pet them, but you can walk by with a couple feet space and they don't mind. Maybe the guide explained why their legs are blue, but we couldn't tell because he only spoke spanish. I think it's got something to do with finding a mate. We took tons of pictures of these guys. They were everywhere.

As with most offshore islands, Isla de la Plata is home to lots of different bird colonies.  Besides the blue footed boobies, the only other nesting sites we saw were the Nazca boobies and the Waved Albatross (only saw one bird deep in a bush). There are also Maginificent Frigates, Red-billed Tropic birds, Red-footed Boobies, and pelicans nesting on the island, though we only saw these in flight. 

Nazca booby nesting

booby in flight

The snorkeling that we did (or I should say "I did" since Steph sat in the boat), was only alright. Saw a little corral, schools of little fish, some big fish that weren't terribly interesting, and some starfish. There were a bunch of sea turtles that hung around the boat and LOVED watermelon, so we got to feed them by hand, but I didn't see any while snorkeling. 

The real highlight of the trip was the whale watching. Every year between June and September humpback whales come to the waters between Puerto Lopez and Isla de la Plata to mate and calf. We're here near the end of the season, but still there were loads of whales to be seen. Neither of us have even seen a whale before, so the first spoat?? from the blowhole was really exciting. I'd say we saw about 15 fairly close from the boat between the trip to and from the island, and many more in the distance both from the boat and from land. That was the really amazing part - you could look off into the distance and almost routinely see a big black object rise out of the water and then make a huge white splash. Even as we're walking around the island a couple times we'd look out and see a whale jump one, two, three times in a row. Unfortunately we never got to see one jump (aka "breach") really close up, except this little baby that was playing around by itself jumping again and again out of the water. He never could quite make it all the way out. Then we got to see him swim off with his huge mother that made him look so small, even though he was probably the size of our boat. 

a wee baby out for a play

We also got to see a lot of splashing around and a few tail shots.  We really enjoyed it and are thinking of going out again tomorrow for a few hours just to do some whale watching. Don't tell Steph but I think I might jump in the water if they are real close and try to swim with them...

On our way here we had an overnight stay in Guayaquil, not because there is anything interesting there but because we couldn't take 12 hours on an Ecuadorian bus in one day. Turns out our hostel had a cage of pygmy marmosets that they were raising as part of a reintroduction project. They were shy little buggers but really unlike any monkey we had ever seen.

not a great pic thru the chicken wire but you can see momma and baby

Another interesting tidbit about our journey here was the town of Jipijapa. Since Steph would never allow a future baby to be named this, I think I'll call my next pet Jipijapa. A 'j' is pronounced like an 'h' in spanish, so it sounds like "hippi-hoppa". Tomorrow hopefully we'll do some more whale watching and plan to visit the mainland part of the national park (of which we already have $20 passes for), which is supposed to have some really good beaches. Tomorrow night we have an overnight bus back to Quito, where we'll spend the day before an overnight flight to Santiago. Gonna be a long next few days...